‘School of Innovation’ lets students get comfortable

SHELTON, Conn. — All 398 seventh-graders at Shelton Intermediate School faced the same task: take sides and successfully argue the position of patriots or loyalists in the American Revolutionary War.

Most would spend three 50-minute social studies classes researching and writing, using laptops, audio tapes, hand outs and videos to compile evidence.

The 186 students who are part of the new School of Innovation tackled the assignment differently.

Using the same materials, the School of Innovation — with its flexible schedule and team taught approach — pulled off the task in a single day and however the 12-year-old students felt most comfortable.

For student Nick Woods, that meant curling up under a classroom’s corner sink.

“It’s quiet over here,” Woods said with a shrug, his Chrome book propped up against his knees.

Other kids shared a couch. Some sat at traditional desks. A few gravitated to a lounge across the hall that was filled with sparkling lights.

From unconventional seating to its collaborative approach, the School of Innovation is Shelton’s attempt to shake things up.

“The idea,” Kenneth Saranich, the school’s headmaster, said, “is to save public education. It hasn’t changed in over 180 years while the world has changed dramatically.”

Kids who want to know when the Battle of Hastings was fought, Saranich argued, can look up facts on their phones. What they need to know is how to use those facts.

Saranich has wanted to change things up for years. Not until Schools Superintendent Chris Clouet came to town did he find a willing partner.

The two say they co-created a model that involves a lot more than flexible seating. Student preferences dictate a lot of what is taught. There are projects and themes and a liberal use of technology.

The goal is not just to pump kids’ heads full of knowledge but give them the skills to use that knowledge.

“We are preparing (students) for a different future.” Clouet said.

Not to mention employers like Google and Amazon and Apple.

Clouet is working with the Yale School of Management to develop the school and has started a Connecticut Schools of Innovation group with area superintendents. Danbury, Branford, Guilford, Meriden, Shelton, Stamford, Wallingford and Westport are among participants, Clouet said.

The movement is part of a growing trend to make public school more about knowledge and less about testing. Without a clear pattern, though, school districts are working as independently on a solution as their students.

With the help of willing teachers, Shelton spent a year in preparation before starting the school this fall then jumped right in.

“We have to remind ourselves ‘slow and steady,'” Christine Purcell, a teacher in the program, said. “We have this huge vision but we are not going to get there overnight.”

Shelton officials say the program costs no more than the traditional classroom. Program development was built in existing summer curriculum development time. Most of the flexible seating, including a teepee in one room, were donated.

Instead of the “three Rs,” pillars of the program are the “four Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. Students still get language arts, math, science and social studies, but not as distinct courses.

“I know they are doing more work than last year because they tell us all the time,” Penny Zhitomi, a language arts teacher of 27 years, said. “These are very hardworking kids.”

Students were picked for the new program through a lottery. Their parents were allowed to opt them out. Few did.

Saranich doesn’t expect the School of Innovation to ever work for all students.

“This would always be an option,” Saranich said. “Never in whole school.”

Woods, the student who likes sitting under the sink, credits the program with making school less boring.

“It is something new every day,” he said.

Attendance is one of the school’s early signs of success.

In the first marking period, 68 students in the School of Innovation — or 36.5 percent — had perfect attendance compared with an average of 14 students — or less than 7 percent — in other seventh-grade teams. The absentee rate among innovation students is two-thirds less than the rest of the school, Saranich said.

“Clearly the students in the Shelton Innovation School love being school,” Clouet said.

The true measure of success, however, will be how students in the school fare academically. State tests are given in the spring.

For the most part, the school has done away with class periods. Teachers work together on lessons based on a theme of the week. Work is recorded on digital portfolios. On Fridays, students demonstrate what they learn in any number of ways.

On a week where the theme was persistence, one student worked in the hallways, showing visiting school board members his efforts to put macaroni in a cup using toothpicks.

“The idea is not to give up,” Jayden Opper, 12, said.

Others work in teams to build a house of cards with one student blindfolded, another using only one hand, one not speaking and another wearing sound canceling headphones.

“They are reinventing how they run their classes,” Board Chairman Mark Holden said during a visit. “These kids are engaged.”

Dave Gioiello, another board member, said he liked the hands-on parts of the program, which includes a garden laboratory and other science and technology-based projects.

“They get to play with hand tools,” Gioiello told the rest of the school board excitedly. “Kids don’t do that anymore.”

In June, students will lead conferences to demonstrate what they have learned and explain why this type of program is for them.

No need to sell Shelton High School Headmaster Beth Smith. She plans to adopt innovation school practices when this year’s seventh-graders reach high school. That class graduates in 2023, the year statewide high school graduation requirements are set to become more flexible.

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